Cal admits to serious student-athlete flaws

Fans cheer a touchdown by the Cal football team, which has the worst graduation rate among 72 major-conference schools.

Fans cheer a touchdown by the Cal football team, which has the worst graduation rate among 72 major-conference schools.

Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle

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Cal players take the field before the start of the California Golden Bears vs. the Portland State Vikings at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, CA Saturday September 7, 2013.

Cal players take the field before the start of the California Golden Bears vs. the Portland State Vikings at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, CA Saturday September 7, 2013.

Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle

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"At a point, the pressure to win caused us to put more focus on the
athletic piece and, as a result, we saw less performance on the academic
side," said Cal Athletic Director Sandy Barbour.

"At a point, the pressure to win caused us to put more focus on the
athletic piece and, as a result, we saw less performance on the academic
side," said Cal Athletic Director Sandy Barbour.

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

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Cal's men's basketball team has the lowest graduation
rates among 72 major-conference schools at 38 percent.

Cal's men's basketball team has the lowest graduation
rates among 72 major-conference schools at 38 percent.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

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In this file photo, Derek Van Rheenen, right, director of UC Berkeley's athletic study center, speaks with a former Cal student and wide receiver Drew Glover. Cal has hired six full-time employees to beef up his staff, which provides tutoring and advice to student athletes. less

In this file photo, Derek Van Rheenen, right, director of UC Berkeley's athletic study center, speaks with a former Cal student and wide receiver Drew Glover. Cal has hired six full-time employees to beef up ... more

Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle

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Winning games and selling tickets have become of utmost importance at
the school, thanks to a confluence of factors including the high cost of
rebuilding Memorial Stadium.

Winning games and selling tickets have become of utmost importance at
the school, thanks to a confluence of factors including the high cost of
rebuilding Memorial Stadium.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

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Cal admits to serious student-athlete flaws

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UC Berkeley officials, responding to recent reports of lax admissions standards and poor graduation rates among student athletes, admitted this week that the university has a serious problem that is at times exacerbated by the desire to succeed on the field.

"At a point, the pressure to win caused us to put more focus on the athletic piece and, as a result, we saw less performance on the academic side," said Cal Athletic Director Sandy Barbour.

Barbour added that the university is working to improve the situation for student athletes by adding more instructors to its student-athlete study center. She also said preliminary NCAA data show that more football players stayed in school and graduated last year when compared with previous years.

"We have an issue. No doubt," said Barbour, during a wide-ranging discussion between The Chronicle and top Cal officials. "It's a serious one. And we have taken several measures to correct it. We're not done."

The acknowledgment comes in the wake of NCAA data that showed Cal's football and men's basketball teams have the lowest graduation rates among 72 major-conference schools, 44 and 38 percent respectively.

A report by two UC Berkeley scholars further fueled concerns at the school by revealing that Cal is admitting student athletes with surprisingly low grades in the revenue-generating sports of football and men's basketball.

It all adds up to a volatile situation at UC Berkeley, widely considered the best public university in the world.

The panel of UC Berkeley officials - which included members of the athletic department, faculty members and public relations staffers - blamed a variety of factors for the rock-bottom graduation rates among Cal's revenue-generating athletes. They said the school encourages a culture in which coaches shield student athletes from challenging courses, and pressure to succeed on the field supersedes academic concerns, at times.

Opportunity to succeed

But UC Berkeley officials questioned the correlation between low admission standards and poor graduation rates. They said athletes admitted to Cal under lowered admissions standards still have the opportunity to succeed, but some student athletes get caught up in situations that prevent them from doing so.

"It's something in the culture," said Richard Rhodes, an associate dean who heads the Academic Senate's committee on admissions. "The coaches tend to be afraid of certain courses. So, students delay in taking them."

As a result, some student athletes at Cal avoid courses deemed difficult to pass by their coaches. And some of those courses are required to graduate. Rhodes identified classes in "Quantitative Reasoning" and "Reading and Composition" as two such courses.

The issues among student athletes at Cal vary wildly by sport. While revenue-generating sports such as men's basketball and football have suffered dramatic reductions in graduation rates, other sports, such as women's lacrosse and crew, often boast near-perfect rates.

Van Rheenen said Cal has hired six full-time employees to beef up his staff, which provides tutoring and advice to student athletes. The department has had some recent success offering core courses over the summer months, when student athletes may have less hectic schedules.

"It makes sense, in that we have a captive audience," Van Rheenen said. "It's a full load, in a shorter period of time."

UC Berkeley officials are also optimistic that graduation numbers are looking up, at least for football players. The estimated graduation rate for players who had enrolled in 2007 was 65 percent last spring, according to data released early by the NCAA and provided to The Chronicle by Cal officials.

But that's a number that tracks only one year of graduates. The more comprehensive, four-year figure released last month showed a graduation rate of 44 percent. Even with a one-year uptick to 65 percent, the four-year average will remain low.

Improvement expected

But it's a step in the right direction, Cal officials say. The NCAA also tracks how long many student athletes stay in school, in a metric they call the Academic Progress Rate. Last year, Cal football scored a 923, which is below the accepted standard of 930. This year, the NCAA estimates a result of 969 for Cal.

Despite those apparent gains, critics say it will take more than a one-year improvement to solve a complex and difficult problem that has oftentimes divided the UC Berkeley campus.

John Cummins, former head of intercollegiate athletics who retired in 2008 as associate chancellor and chief of staff, co-authored the paper on Cal's low admission standards for student athletes with Kirsten Hextrum, a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Education.

"The graduation rates will improve because the focus is there," Cummins said. "There's no question it will be turned around. ... But what happens in 10 years?"